Friday
Jul102015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Truth and the green
Jul 10, 2015 Climate: Sceptics Greens Media Among the environmentally concerned, playing fast and loose with the actualité is seen as a tactic that delivers good results quickly and it's easy to see why: environmental correspondents are almost to a man (or woman) signed up members of the green movement and can be relied upon to repeat even the grossest misrepresentations.
As a good example of truth-telling among the green fraternity, take a look at the column written by Catherine Porter in the Toronto Star, in which she describes a "run-in" her nine-year-old daughter had with sceptic writer Ezra Levant. Then take a look at Levant's video response:
Unbelievable.
Reader Comments (72)
Having watched the video to the end, thanks to the link on unthreaded by clipe, it appears to me that the nine year old daughter is aware that her mother has lost the argument. Both her body language and what she says is protective of her mother. I think Catherine Porter made one seriously big parenting mistake and her daughter learnt earlier than most that parents aren't infallible and bend the truth to their own advantage. Question on way home in gas guzzling SUV, "mommy we don't we have an electric car?"
We shouldn't really be surprised about this. Lying is what greens do routinely.
It's fun to see them get caught out like this though. If Catherine Porter is in any doubt about whether this was good parenting I can categorically tell her lying and using your child as a prop makes her a terrible example to a young child. Bad, bad parenting. The woman needs to see a psychologist, and if she's going to carry on like this then it won't be too long before the child also needs a psychologist too.
There is now a quick 4 minute digest version of Levant's explanation video
And we wonder why the green movement won't debate skeptics. The echo chamber is a much safer space.
The stench of sanctimonious self-righteous hypocracy is repellant!
“Unbelievable” is your sad conclusion. I have to disagree with you, Your Bishness, but it is all too, too believable. What we have to do is to try and get these sorts of stories out into the real world – through the medium of the internet, we are trying, and proving to be very successful, but the mainstream media is still controlled by those who wish to perpetuate the myth, so it will continue to be a long, long struggle. Only when the lights start to go out will the gullible sheeple wake up to reality, though I do wonder how the MSM will mould the lies around that.
Pity there are no comments after that article.
It's clear from her interaction with Ezra that she is a hard core leftist in her belief in the religion of Mann Made Global Warming (tm). She probably has convinced herself that her account is true and even if she were to be challenged, again given how she interacted with Ezra, she wouldn't answer any questions put to her straight or truthfully and would instead obfuscate and redirect questions with her own questions.
However now that Ezra has released this video it will act as a disinfectant (daylight being the best disinfectant there is) this making her position indefensible to rational people.
She's just lucky catastrophiliacs, like her, are not rational people.
Mailman
Pity there are no comments after that article.
It's clear from her interaction with Ezra that she is a hard core leftist in her belief in the religion of Mann Made Global Warming (tm). She probably has convinced herself that her account is true and even if she were to be challenged, again given how she interacted with Ezra, she wouldn't answer any questions put to her straight or truthfully and would instead obfuscate and redirect questions with her own questions.
However now that Ezra has released this video it will act as a disinfectant (daylight being the best disinfectant there is) this making her position indefensible to rational people.
She's just lucky catastrophiliacs, like her, are not rational people.
Mailman
A superb, intellent, polite, precise and cogent response to a half witted lefty trying to indoctrinate and corrupt her child. A most disgusting revelation and one that shows precisely the lack of knowledge and willingness to debate by the A1GW fanatics
I bet she believes it happened the way she wrote it up.
Thank God the cameras were rolling for the entire segment. The video plus Porter's mendacious retelling of the story also is the best support for Levant's argument that some of those attending this rally were hypocrites - for hypocrites, at root, lie to themselves and to others.
By comparison to the gross misrepresentation of available and documented facts, Levant's argument that hypocrisy is manifested by the fact that the protesters enjoy the fruits of a fossil fuel based economy is very weak tea.
Are we in an ice age? No, child, but soon enough.
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What is so interesting is that she wrote her article, containing the false claims that there was a 'fight', that the poor kid 'marched over' to him, that the kid said "You’re being mean to my mom",and so on, while knowing that his team were filming the whole thing and could expose her fabrications, as well as her hypocrisy and abuse of her child. Why would she do that? It's completely irrational. There's a need for a psychological study of this behaviour (Adam? Stephan?)
One possibility is that these fanatics are so wound up in their own beliefs that they have lost the ability to distinguish between fact and their own fictions -as slywolf says, she really believes what she wrote.
She continues to make up stories on twitter: "@ezralevant I stand by my story. I'm amused at how incensed you are by it". Obviously Levant is not 'incensed' at all.
Dare she let her daughter read her own column?
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Watching the video is worth the time.
Re Paul Mathews
> Why would she do that? It's completely irrational.
Reality doesn't matter. What is important is that there is a piece in a newspaper saying how evil Ezra is and how he can only attack children. The fiction will be pointed to by many and claimed as truth.
Your Grace,
Ouch. I'm glad I'm not Catherine Porter this morning. She has to be suffering the effects of a tremendously hungover conscience.
The commentary is typical of the Toronto Star. The paper tends to lean way to the left and has been promoting narratives that would argue for more government and more intervention. Sadly, that is common today as more and more people turn to government to solve problems that are usually created by government.
I guess the Toronto Star paid mom for the column so maybe she still thinks she is doing something right.
With such clear objective and honest reporting, expect Catherine Porter to be the BBC's new Chief Climate Science reporter.
It is very sad for that child to have to grow up knowing her innocence was sold for cheap politics. At least it was on a vegan site, so she was not force fed a beefburger.
Terry, yes, that's the alternative explanation - that these people are perfectly aware that they are lying, but believe that their cause is so just that lying about it is the right thing to do. And that they calculate that more people will see and believe the lies than will see the rebuttal (clearly a mis-calculation in this case).
@ Jul 10, 2015 at 1:52 PM | Vangel
Whichever way the paper leans it has thrown her under the bus by publishing the response.
Credit to them for that. It could have just tried to quietly disappear the article. For those that read it the lie would still be real.
I feel very sorry for the young girl who is obviously an intelligent girl with good social skills and well developed empathy but a pawn to her mothers ideology. Very sad actually.
Green Philosophy at its best- "do as I say, not as I do".
Clovis:
The Toronto Star's response is grossly insufficient. Some form of retraction for such egregious errors is required. Her lies have essentially been allowed to stand. Michael Mann or Andrew Weaver would have brought a lawsuit if they had been the target instead of Ezra.
Here is Levant's verbal response: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editors/2015/07/07/ezra-levant-begs-to-differ.html
I also note that Porter's column is under "news" and Levant's column is under "opinion".
As said upthread, the video is well worth watching. I particularly liked the part where Levant asked Porter about her own personal contribution to reducing the effects of AGW: she said it was not up to her as an individual to do anything, it was up to everyone, to society, to work together. Levant needed to push her on that piece of disconnect. To usse one of her favoured phrases, he needed to put the 'kibosh' on her.
(for those not interested in the vid, Porter believed that fossil-fuel conglomerates were putting the kibosh on the electric car, especially so in California where the EV was just dead. Levant reminded her that CA was the home state for Tesla yet she seemed not to have heard of them.)
TerryS has it right.
The allegation will flash around the world. Few who hear it will know the video exists let alone watch it.
The intended audience isn't really who are on the fence on the issue either; it is intended to discourage deserters from the ranks of the true believers; I suspect she hopes to forever link the notion of questioning whether catastrophic human induced climate change is happening with being a right-wing fascistic thug who terrorizes sweet, innocent 9 year old girls. Then they will keep quiet about any of their doubts, because who wants to appear to sympathize with a horrible person?
We've all embellished a story to make ourselves look good and over time we may have forgotten the real truth but few people would dare to rewrite an encounter with a confident motormouth in front of a camera
You have to feel sorry for the poor Kid. She hasn't got much of a chance in life.
Not so much 'unbelievable' as 'typical'.....
Sadly this is what we've come to expect.
One interesting aspect was that this was Jobs, Justice and Climate march. Similarly, climate activists tagged onto the anti-austerity march in London on 20th June, although they were a minor part of the gathering. It shows that the climate agenda is part of the political beliefs of the extreme left.
Another aspect should be of interest to Stephan Lewandowsky. Conspiracist ideation appears to be a failing of climate activists. Perhaps if he had raised the big oil conspiracy in his questionnaires he might have arrived to conclusions that challenged his beliefs.
From an Amazon review of Scott Pecks People of the Lie:
"Peck so accurately diagnoses the "people of the lie" as being so self-absorbed and narcisistic that they continually make excuses about the abuse they heap upon other people, somehow turning every story 180 degrees in the opposite direction and always claiming victimization when the situation so clearly points to them as the perpetrator. It is a sad indictment of what must be a pandemic within institutions, as these folks clamor and cling to power, money and title oblivious to the human carnage left in the wake of their passing." --David Di Sabatino
In the service of that imperative, anything can be used, and that very definitely includes the children.
Am I standing up straight enough Daddy?
Pointman
"You have to feel sorry for the poor Kid. She hasn't got much of a chance in life."
Actually, my friend, the opposite has been true. Public intellectuals who engage in the promotion of State propaganda tend to be very well compensated. The kid only has to look at her mother and she can find out that being a liar pays well.
Three Star readers took time to write a few words to the Star regarding Porter's behavior. They were not pleased.
Porter column, Levant video | Toronto Star
Re: Ezra Levant begs to differ, Letters July 8
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editors/2015/07/08/porter-column-levant-video.html
Seems to me that Ms. Porter has a daughter that Ms. Porter certainly does not deserve.
May Lyla persevere and have a wonder long life.
Preferably as a conservative judge.
Her daughter is 9 - a lovely age - honest and helpful and loyal to her mother. But that video will probably still be around when she is 13, and 13 year old girls are a whole different story. I predict a rather fraught mother-daughter relationship in future.
Not so much DramaQueening as DramaMummy-ing..coming from a 'Mummy knows best' mindset ..We know this is par for the course in the way that Climate/Green/Liberal issues are presented thru media like BBC, ABC, Guardian etc.
- That the heartfelt issues are so important and Mummy's conspiracy theories of imagined powerful BogeyMen so strong that the Mummywriters feel they have to give "truth" a helping hand.
Bish puts its "Among the environmentally concerned, playing fast and loose with the actualité is seen as a tactic that delivers good results quickly and it's easy to see why"
as Joel O'Bryan said Noble Cause corruption(NCC) mindset leads to “End Justifies the Means EJM behaviour.
- "I bet she believes it happened the way she wrote it up." says @Slywolfe
Exactly and she'll be able to find a '97% of cherrypicked small sample of scientists' who also believe her version is true.
- I note the loaded emotive language she used : "right-wing bully", "belittling", "preparing to brawl with" , "The one doubter" ...especially since Levant's full video show those claims to be false.
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- There's RealWorld and there are fictiousWorlds particularly GreenReligionFantasyWorlds.
And what world do you get from Lie-beral media ? They'll put anyone like their mates if they are ON MESSAGE.
..whereas most of the public will never get to see a nobel prize winner cos he's OFF MESSAGE
Heres's another for the Skeptics video channel Norweigen Ivar Giaever: Global Warming Revisited (2015) He knocks back all the main alarmist arguments ..intro via Climate Depot
or Maybe MummyBias or ParentalInstinct bias is a better expression to describe the way articles are automatically skewed in writing by the writers genuine emotional concern.
- With Green issues that emotional concern has 2 parts : There's impending catastrophe / Green solutions are magic.
Great illustration of one of the fundamental charater flaws of the liberal mindset : they see the world as they wish it to be, rather than as it actually is.
Great to know that Greenpeace have a well stocked Art Department. Could they knockout a quick Nazca Lines repair kit? Do they do kits to connect your water pipes to flammable gas cannisters, so fake photographs are easy to replicate on a DIY basis?
Their stuffed cuddly cutesy polar bear cub, stood on white polystyrene pretend ice is sure to be a winner at Christmas, so people in Florida can take photos of drowning polar bears in their swimming pool
The Toronto Star are to be commended for presenting the correction to their original piece. Is this because they saw the probability of a major loss in credibility, and legal damages? Or did members of the Editorial Team already have some doubts about Ms Porter's integrity and credibility? Greenpeace and all that entails.
Ms Porter would be very quick to write a piece about child exploitation, if she found out that one of the pretty dresses she had bought cheap for her daughter, had been made by child labour in the Philippines.
Sarah Palin was ridiculed for being a Hockey Mum
Ms Porter is a Hockey Stick mum.
A hardcore true believer in any ideology does not need facts.
There are many, many hardcore true believers affiliated with cliamte obsession.
Ah, but we ARE in an Ice Age. We're in an intraglacial waiting for the next big glaciation as part of our current Ice Age.
But it's harder to explain warming if we're in an Ice Age??
Ah, but we ARE in an Ice Age. We're in an intraglacial waiting for the next big glaciation as part of our current Ice Age.
You are absolutely right. The Earth has been stuck in an Icehouse condition for millions of years and if man has an influence it is to keep the planet from sliding into another ice age at this time. I wonder why a person like Ms. Porter, who is clearly intelligent enough, prefers Canada to be much colder than it is and to see the climate moving back to the conditions that created the ice sheet that towered over the place at which the rally was being held.
Vangel, Ms Porter can afford to turn up the heating in her house, and she expects the school to do the same for her daughter.
Driving her daughter to school is no problem, because in her fossil fuelled car, she can turn up the heating in that too.
Bit of a problem for battery powered cars. Using heating or airconditioning makes a bit of a dent in the manufacturers extended range figures.
Not being able to keep warm when stuck in snow and ice conditions (assuming you have fuel) could be fatal in a British winter. It will be fatal in a Canadian winter. I don't think Tesla advertise the improved cryopreservation potential of their cars.